Hayley Stoneham 17666772

Infanticide and Society in Late 19th Century

Melbourne

Bella Ferguson, Melbourne Gaol1

Regina VS Bella Ferguson

On the 17th of December 1889, twenty year old domestic servant, Bella Ferguson was convicted of
murder at the Melbourne Supreme Court. The victim, her four week old infant son. The baby,
dressed neatly in a night gown tied with ribbon, had been found by a passer-by floating in 8ft of
water in an underground water tank located at the back of an abandoned house. Police were
notified and Bella Ferguson was arrested at her employers house the same day.
Verdict, guilty. Sentence, death by hanging.

Court transcript from the trial.2

1
2

PROV, 5767/P0002, Unit 10.

PROV, 1100/P0002, Unit 1.

The act of infanticide

can be used

between moral order and economic

reality in late 19th century Victoria

as a means of examining social and moral

values in relation to the law. This act has
been defined and redefined by society,
from the ancient Greeks and Romans3 up
to our present point in time. Infanticide
today is treated as manslaughter,
punishable by imprisonment4. In medieval
Europe, penance books casually prescribe
3 years living without wine and meat as
suitable punishment5. In late nineteenth-

Lying-In Hospital, North Melbourne, 1858.8

century Victoria, Bella Ferguson was

sentenced to hang.6 Social circumstances
also dictate how a society views
infanticide. A late nineteenth-century,
Judeo-Christian society, may view

Homeless, friendless and

distressed,

infanticide as irrational and unnatural;

presenting it as a result of an immoral or
mental imbalance. Yet, in other social
constructs it has been seen as a
responsible solution to difficulties facing
the larger group.7 In turn, Fergusons act

Bella Ferguson, gave birth at the Lying-In

Hospital, Carlton10. Ferguson would not
have been the only unfortunate girl11 to
be admitted, with over half the women
who gave birth at this hospital being

of infanticide illuminates the tension

Michelle Oberman, A Brief History of Infanticide

and the Law in Margaret G. Spinelli (ed.),
Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives on
Mothers Who Kill, (United States: American
Psychiatric Pub, 2008), 4.
4
Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) s 6
5
K Mosley, History of Infanticide in Western
Society, Issues in Law & Medicine, 1/ 5 (1986),
345.
6
PROV, 1100/P0002, Unit 1.
7
For instance, in eighteenth-century Japan the act
of infanticide was practiced to avoid population

pressure on resources. Fabian Drixler, Mabiki:

Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern
Japan, 1660-1950, (United States: University of
California Press, Los Angeles 2013),91.
8
Melbourne Lying-in Hospital [image], (1858) <
https://www.thewomens.org.au/about/ourhistory/history-overview/>, accessed 12 Oct. 2015.
9
PROV, 246/P0000, Unit 13.
10
PROV, 246/P0000, Unit 13.
11
The Convict Bella Ferguson, South Bourke and
Mornington Journal, 25 Dec. 1889, 2, In Trove
[online database], accessed 1 Oct. 2015.

unmarried and many destitute12. Half of

I was left alone with no one to talk to

the babies born at the Lying-In Hospital

Williams took the last shilling I had for

were dead before the age of one, due to

rent and refused me a jug of water to

the single mother, burdened as the sole

wash the child and Telford the baker

carer to provide adequate food, shelter

refused me a loaf of bread and Ive

and security13. Without a husband

nothing to eat for three days only a bit of

earning a regular wage to support her, the

cake. 18

prospect of breast feeding a baby for nine

months was almost impossible14.
Respectable work was available mainly in
the way of domestic service and factory

A great and growing evil

work, but pose the obvious problem of

childcare15. Women were often

Certainly, there may be no way to tell just

dependant on these wages for their own

how many women committed a similar act

survival16. It is perhaps telling that

to Ferguson. Official records reflect only

Ferguson was able to gain employment as

registered births and deaths: in an era that

a domestic servant only a few days after

predates access to effective birth control

she killed her child17. Other cases also

and safe abortion, there must certainly be

point to strong economic factors as

many more hidden cases19. Parliament

motivation for infanticide. Margaret Price,

identified the magnitude of the problem as

after her baby was found drowned in a

a great and growing evil that was

reservoir commented,

threating the new and thinly-populated

12

Janet McCalman and Ruth Morley, Inequalities

of Gender and Health 1857-1985: A Long-run
Perspective from the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital
Birth Cohort, The Australian Journal of Social
Issues, 43/1 (2008), 30.
13
Janet McCalman and Ruth Morley, Inequalities
of Gender and Health 1857-1985: A Long-run
Perspective from the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital
Birth Cohort, The Australian Journal of Social
Issues, 43/1 (2008), 31.
14
Janet McCalman and Ruth Morley, Inequalities
of Gender and Health 1857-1985: A Long-run
Perspective from the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital
Birth Cohort, The Australian Journal of Social
Issues, 43/1 (2008), 34.

15

W.A. Sinclare, 2008, Women and economic

change in Melbourne 1871-1921, Australian
Historical Studies, 20/79 (1982), 281.
16
Barbara Burton, Bad Mothers?: Infant killing in
Victoria, 1885-1914, Honours thesis, (University of
Melbourne, 1986), 20.
17
PROV, 1100/P0000, Unit 13.
18
Alleged Infanticide, Evening News Sydney, 31
Oct. 1888, 2 , In Trove [online database], accessed
1 Oct. 2015.
19
Ann Higginbotham, Sins of the Age:
Infanticide and Illegitimacy in Victorian London.
Victorian Studies, 32/3 (1989), 319-37.

country20.

Further

insight

to

the

frequency of the act of killing an unwanted

child can be observed from Police
Gazettes. From the period 1885-1889, an
average of 10 babies a month were found
dead in Victoria, 65% of which were
deemed a result of murder. Surprisingly,
only twenty-one arrests were made, more
striking, is only four of these resulted in
conviction21. The low rate of conviction
and often the commuting of sentences
reveals a dichotomy between societys
view of infanticide and the severity of the
law. An editorial piece explained:

an abnormally large percentage of

those accused of it escape
condemnationWe are inclined to believe
there isa widespread if somewhat vague
idea that the punishment prescribed by
the law is too severe 22
Petition on behalf of Bella Ferguson.23

20

Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected

Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,
<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015.

21

Figures calculated from a survey of Police

Gazettes. Barbara Burton, Bad Mothers?: Infant
killing in Victoria, 1885-1914, Honours thesis,
(University of Melbourne, 1986), 50-51.
22
Thursday March 28, 1912, The Argus, 28 Mar.
1912, 6.
23
PROV, 246/P0000, Unit 13.

Poor unfortunate girls

The public reaction that followed
Fergusons conviction suggest that

responsibility and economic motivation.

The alternative being a murderess mother
who kills her infant simply because they
could not afford to keep it.

sympathy lay with the woman. One

reaction to Fergusons conviction,

here is a poor innocent girl, in all the

fervour of a pure and trusting love, gives
way to the wiles and fascinations of her
seducer24.
The sympathy for Ferguson is also evident
in the form of a petition, containing over
three thousand signatures, calling for a
lighter sentence and early release25. Much
of the publics anger was directed at the
man who so cruelly seduced this
unfortunate womanleaving her to the

Newspaper advertisements placed by desperate

mothers and baby farmers.28

mercy of a cruel and pitiless world26.

Romanticised by the middle-class, these
women attributed characteristics much

The real villain

like that found in popular novels of the

Instead, society chose to demonise the

time; creatures with a non-existent sex

baby farmer. It is certainly true that some

drive driven to folly by outside factors27.

baby farms who were valued for the

This was an image far more palatable to a

public who idealised motherhood but also
has the effect of obscuring any social
24

The Convict Bella Ferguson, To the Editor of The

Age, The Age, 23 Dec. 1889, 5, in Trove [online
database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.
25
PROV, 246/P0000, Unit 13.
26
The Convict Bella Ferguson, To the Editor of
The Age, The Age, 23 Dec. 1889, 5, in Trove
[online database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.

27

Karin Lewicki, Can You Forgive Her: Legal

Ambivalence toward Infanticide, Southern
California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 8/2
(1999),689.
28
Advertisements, The Age, 28 Jun. 1888, 6. And
Advertisements, The Age, 13 May. 1893, 3, in
Trove [online database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.

Feminist ideals

discrete service29 may have had a

malevolent side, disposing of infants
whilst taking money for their care30.

Public reaction to infanticide also reveals

Alternatively, a feminist approach might

suggest baby-farmers were working-class
single women, who, for a weekly sum,
offered an early form of foster

care31.

In a

society where the government resisted

the establishment of a Foundlings Home
because they feared it as an incentive for
immorality32, they were one of few
options. It seems Ferguson considered this
option but perhaps lacked the financial
means. A witness at her trial recounting,

the attitudes of a changing society.

Amongst the voices heard, the voice of
the feminist is perhaps the most indicative
of this. The petition to reduce her
sentence was put forward by the founder
of the Australian Womens Suffrage
society, Mrs Brettena Smyth34. Smyth, an
early promoter of contraception, which
she sold from her drapery shop, was well
known for her lectures on womens
health, love and marriage35. Petitions
were made by such women on behalf of

she said she was going to put the

child out to nurse and intended to take a
situation. 33

many women convicted of infanticide36.

Most of the petitions drew attention to
the fact that the jury may have
overlooked mental instability as a cause37,
again an appeal to the popular notion of
motherhood. Killing an infant being so

29

Shurlee Swain, Toward a social geography of

baby farming, The History of the Family, 10/2
(2005), 157.
30
The case of the Makins is the most notable, the
discovery of the remains of 13 infants leading to
the death sentence. The Baby Farm Horror: The
Makins Sentenced to Death, Freemans Journal, 8
Apr. 1893, 19.
31
Jan Kociumbas, Azarias Antecedents:
Stereotyping Infanticide in late NineteenthCentury Australia, Gender and History, 13/1
(2001), 147.
32
Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected
Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,

<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015.
33
PROV, 246/P0000, Unit 13.
34
PROV, 246/P0000, Unit 13.
35
Jane Carey, The Racial Imperatives of Sex: birth
control and eugenics in Britain, the United States
and Australia in the interwar years, Womens
History Review, 21/5 (2012), 743.
36
For example in the case of Margaret Heffernan.
The Case of Margaret Heffernan: Petition to the
Executive Council, The Argus, 3 Mr. 1900, 15, in
Trove [online database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.
37
A petition on behalf of Maggie Heffernan states,
there is absolutely no doubt that she was
suffering from puerperal mania when she drowned
her baby, that she did not receive justice at her
trial. PROV, 264/P0001, Unit 3.

unnatural that it is evidence itself of

mental unbalance, rather than mental
stress caused by social and financial
hurdles.

An urgent problem
The Infant Life Protection Act 1890,
enacted a year after Fergusons trial was
also a sign of official awareness to the
number of abandoned and murdered
children. In practice, however, it was a
response to the demonised baby farmers,
requiring their policing, registration and
supervision39. Although the state did
recognise that help for such girl-mothers
was urgently needed40, it was reliant on
volunteers from community groups41. One
suggestion was the establishment of
Young Womens Friendly Advise Offices,
where a lady attendant would offer advice
and assist in placing the child into care,
the mother agreeing to pay from her

Pamphlet by Melbourne suffragette, Brettena

Smyth.38

wages a monthly sum on account of its

maintenance there42. This was seen as
more desirable solution than the
establishment of a Foundling Hospital43. A

38

Pamphlet by Bernetta Smyth [image], <

http://prov.vic.gov.au/blog-only/suffragettebrettena-smyth-taught-birth-control-in-1880>,
accessed 1 Oct. 2015.
39
Infant Life Protection Act 1890 (Vic) s 3, 4, 5, 6.
40
Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected
Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,
<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015.
41
Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected
Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,

<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015.
42
Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected
Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,
<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015, 60.
43
Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected
Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,
<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015, 62.

state run Foundling Hospitals may have

been a more practical solution to
penniless women such as Ferguson, as
even registered baby farmers and infant
asylums required a monthly fee.

objection on the grounds that such places

might encourage

The

concern being, if women were allowed to

leave a baby at the hospital they would
not have had their maternal instincts
awakened and exercised in the nursing of
her child, which, it was argued, would
result in a loss of moral

tone45

Bella Fergusons employer might not have

been too concerned about loss of moral
tone as she accepted Ferguson back into

Foundling Hospitals were met with strong

immorality44.

A product of their time?

her employment after her release. It is

evident, from court documents and other
archives that many sympathised with
women like Ferguson. Reluctant to
confront the fact there were murderess
mothers wandering the street, society
instead cast the baby farmer as the villain
and painted the women as redeemable
victims. Poverty appears to be the main
motivator of these crimes, an issue which
the community, more concerned with the
morality of the situation, was unable and
unwilling to deal with directly. It is
perhaps unfair to judge a society in
hindsight and tell it what it could have
done better, or even, try to justify a
terrible crime. This was a changing
society, populated with moral-do-

Character reference and offer of employment from

Mrs Searle as part of the petition for Fergusons
early release.46

gooders, and evidently far from

complacent, even if we judge their
motivations as misplaced. In turn, our

44

Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected

Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,
<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015, 61.

45

Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected

Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121,
Victoria, 1891, 61,
<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record
/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015, 61.
46
PROV, 246/P0000, Unit 13.

current society may also be judged by a future society with different social structures, for
the way we navigate issues such as abortion. How we, as a society, define and redefine
crimes, who we villainize, pity, and how we react, will continue to change.

Bella Ferguson at the time of her release.47

47

PROV, 5767/P0002, Unit 10.

PROV, VA 25490 Supreme Court of Victoria, VPRS 1100/P0002 Capital Sentence Files, Unit 1, Bella
Ferguson.
PROV, VA 25490 Supreme Court of Victoria, VPRS 246/P0000 Capital Case Files, Unit 13, Bella
Ferguson.
PROV, VA 25490 Supreme Court of Victoria, VPRS 264/P0001, Capital Case Files, Unit 3, Margaret
Heffernan.
PROV, VA 1464 Penal and Gaols Branch, Chief Secretarys Department, VPRS 5767/P0002, Central
Register of Female Prisoners, Unit 10, Ferguson, Bella.
Infant Life Protection Act 1890 (Vic) s 3, 4, 5, 6.
Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) s 6.
Victoria, Parliament, Department for Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools: report to the
Secretary for the year 1890, Parl. Paper 121, Victoria, 1891, 61,
<http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/vufind/Record/49229>, accessed 8 Oct. 2015.
The Convict Bella Ferguson, South Bourke and Mornington Journal, 25 Dec. 1889, 2, In Trove [online
database], accessed 1 Oct. 2015.
The Convict Bella Ferguson, To the Editor of The Age, The Age, 23 Dec. 1889, 5, in Trove [online
database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.
Alleged Infanticide, Evening News Sydney, 31 Oct. 1888, 2 , In Trove [online database], accessed 1
Oct. 2015.
The Baby Farm Horror: The Makins Sentenced to Death, Freemans Journal, 8 Apr. 1893, 19.
The Case of Margaret Heffernan: Petition to the Executive Council, The Argus, 3 Mr. 1900, 15, in
Trove [online database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.
Advertisements, The Age, 28 Jun. 1888, 6, in Trove [online database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.
Advertisements, The Age, 13 May. 1893, 3, in Trove [online database], accessed 3 Oct. 2015.
Thursday March 28, 1912, The Argus, 28 Mar. 1912, 6.

Melbourne Lying-in Hospital [image], (1858) < https://www.thewomens.org.au/about/ourhistory/history-overview/>, accessed 12 Oct. 2015.

Pamphlet by Bernetta Smyth [image], < http://prov.vic.gov.au/blog-only/suffragette-brettenasmyth-taught-birth-control-in-1880>, accessed 1 Oct. 2015.

Burton, Barbara, Bad Mothers?: Infant killing in Victoria, 1885-1914, Honours thesis, (University of
Melbourne, 1986).
Carey, Jane, The Racial Imperatives of Sex: birth control and eugenics in Britain, the United States
and Australia in the interwar years, Womens History Review, 21/5 (2012), 743.
Drixler, Fabian, Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660-1950, (United
States: University of California Press, Los Angeles 2013), 91.
Higginbotham, Ann, Sins of the Age: Infanticide and Illegitimacy in Victorian London. Victorian
Studies, 32/3 (1989), 319-37.
Kociumbas, Jan, Azarias Antecedents: Stereotyping Infanticide in late Nineteenth-Century
Australia, Gender and History, 13/1 (2001), 147.
Lewicki, Karin, Can You Forgive Her: Legal Ambivalence toward Infanticide, Southern California
Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 8/2 (1999),689.
McCalman, Janet and Morley, Ruth, Inequalities of Gender and Health 1857-1985: A Long-run
Perspective from the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital Birth Cohort, The Australian Journal of Social
Issues, 43/1 (2008), 30-34.
Mosley, K, History of Infanticide in Western Society, Issues in Law & Medicine, 1/ 5 (1986), 345.
Oberman, Michelle, A Brief History of Infanticide and the Law in Margaret G. Spinelli (ed.),
Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives on Mothers Who Kill, (United States: American
Psychiatric Pub, 2008), 4.
Sinclare, W.A., Women and economic change in Melbourne 1871-1921, Australian Historical
Studies, 20/79 (1982), 281.
Swain, Shurlee, Toward a social geography of baby farming, The History of the Family, 10/2 (2005),
157.
Wyman, M, The Rise of the Fallen Women, American Quarterly, 3/2 (1951), 167.